The Empress’s Gigolo

“Are these the mirrors and cups brought by those barbarians?” A middle-aged man with a long beard was playing with a glass cup. There was also a silver mirror on the table beside him.

“Yes, Sir.”

“It’s hard to believe that that gang of barbarians could come up with such things,” the middle-aged man said doubtfully.

“Sir, these are yours now.”

“Well, not bad. Did you gain anything else?”

“There were also 270,000 taels of silver, 17 mirrors, and 42 such cups…”

“Send it to the government treasury,” the middle-aged said with a smile. Based on the selling price charged by those aboriginals over the past few days, these things were worth 700,000 taels of silver. The total value of these items was one million taels of silver, which was enough to equip at least 20,000 soldiers.

“Sir, will those barbarians take revenge?”

“Fear not. They are preoccupied with other matters, and their country might be exterminated if the situation gets worse. Furthermore, just today, the order has been given to mobilize the soldiers, and our city will contribute 10,000 troops,” the middle-aged man said casually and waved his hand. With this one million taels of silver, even the loss of those 10,000 soldiers could easily be replenished.

“In that case, we and Great Xia will combine to attack that bunch of barbarians. I’m afraid that they will not last long!” the subordinate said in surprise.

…

Boom!

At night, explosions rocked a location somewhere within the Great Xia Barracks, blasting apart the surrounding tents. In the tents, some soldiers died in their sleep while others were wounded, moaning and groaning from the intense pain they were suffering after being rudely awakened.

Soldiers from tents in the vicinity rushed out to remove the dead and carried the wounded to the casualty barracks before rushing back to their tents to rest with their clothes still on. However, they heard the sound of a distant roar before they could fall asleep.

Yet, these soldiers didn’t seem to hear it and fell into a deep slumber.

Initially, they would get nervous, but they got used to it after some time. Over the past few nights, there were explosions every single night. If the explosion was somewhere nearby, they would go out to take a look. On the other hand, they ignored those that sounded far away. If they had to sleep, they slept, and if they had to dream, they dreamt.

All the way until the early morning.

Wu Shenghou dashed out of his tent with a sulky face.

He hadn’t looked pleasant at all over these past few days.

Frustrated!

In his military career, he had never fought such a frustrating battle.

He knew long ago that it would be difficult to fight against Dayao, so much so that he had been planning it for the past 20 years.

How many 20 year periods were there in a person’s lifetime? He spent 20 years planning for an indeterminate event, which showcased his temperament.

No matter how powerful the aboriginals were, he was prepared and confident that he would certainly achieve victory in this war.

In the long run, the northern region of the aboriginals’ territory would be lost. The Yun Nation would invade and the army in the south would rebel. At the same time, new soldiers from Great Xia would reinforce the front lines, and it would be time for those barbarian aboriginals to be chased back to the mountains.

The developments at the beginning of the war were within his expectations.

However, during the last 20 days, everything had changed.

The other side had somehow obtained some totally unfamiliar weapons which were very powerful and were especially devastating on the battlefield against ordinary soldiers.

A small thing lying unnoticed on the roadside was able to cause injuries and death to dozens of people or even up to 100 people.

At the beginning, he thought the other side did not have many of those weapons and would run out of them soon. However, the supply seemed to be endless as one weapon after another was used. Furthermore, their functions frequently changed.

As for the barracks on the battlefield, the thunderous sounds of explosions could always be heard regardless of whether it was day, night, in battle, while resting, or even when fetching water for cooking. These explosions would occur every few hours. As such, all the people in the central barracks were full of anxiety these day.

Especially when Great Xia was attacking, the other party would throw a small exploding ball after the attackers had advanced to a certain stage in order to break up the assault. Before the follow-up forces could arrive, the forces at the front would already be decimated.

These last few days, attacking the other party was ineffective. The number of casualties on Wu Shenghou’s side were getting larger and larger. In contrast, the casualties on the other side was dwindling.

Every time he heard those explosive sounds during their attacks, he would know that the tempo of their attack was getting disrupted.

There was absolutely no ease in directing the attacks compared to before.

The disruption of the attacks every few hours irritated him and caused his chest to tighten.

Plus, the morale on the battlefield was falling lower and lower, which was also another cause for concern.

If the other party didn’t have those strange weapons, morale wouldn’t have dropped so dramatically even after their attacks were temporarily thwarted.

Yet now, they had to watch their every step when walking and looked at the sky when attacking.

This caused many soldiers to be at a loss.

The reason for him to persevere was basically so that he could achieve the strategic objective of this war and wait for the other two armies that were deep in Dayao’s territory to achieve their expected goals.

At the same time, his indomitable spirit compelled him to see how many more strange weapons had yet to be deployed.

He didn’t believe that the other party’s supply of weapons would be endless.

…

Wu Shenghou was in a bad mood, whereas Ren Baqian was in a good mood.

Ren Baqian went out every night to lay some mines and would then fire two shots at the enemy barracks. Seeing the Great Xia soldiers alternate between looking down and staring skyward when coming out of their barracks was a satisfying experience for him.

This was especially so because the soldiers in the city treated him almost like a god now.

Although he wasn’t physically strong, those weird things he brought played a big role in defending the city.

At present, there were still 80,000 Great Xia soldiers outside the city. Even with half of them injured or dead, they still had no intention of withdrawing. Ren Baqian felt that they wouldn’t give up until their goal was achieved.

The situation in the city wasn’t too good. After sending out 300 winged cavalry warriors to intercept the enemy’s food supply line, there were 800 winged cavalry warriors and 3,000 soldiers left, which totaled to no more than 3,800 people. They had also already mobilized some of the commoners, who were here before the empress came, in order to help defend the city.

However, Ren Baqian wasn’t too worried about these people who had been hardened by the experience of war. They only lacked some military knowledge, but they could form a new martial force. In terms of strength and courage, they weren’t worse than the soldiers.

In addition, Great Xia had two other armies in Dayao that were wreaking havoc. One of them had about 80,000 soldiers and had already invaded many strongholds by the time Ren Baqian arrived in Liao City. The casualties started to drop only after all the people in the strongholds had gathered in the cities.

Aside from this army, another force of 100,000 soldiers was doing the same thing. After reaping few benefits in the remote areas, these two groups began to attack the cities and had recently sacked two of them.

The casualties among the defenders in these cities were high, but the casualties suffered by these two armies were also heavy.

In accordance with Ren Baqian’s instructions, more than 3,000 defending guards were selected to defend a city, and even though the militia was formed, it was hard to get them battle-ready in such a short time. By virtue of their personal courage in defending the city and even with their much greater ability compared to the Great Xia soldiers, they still could not escape the destiny of being sacked.

There were already three cities that had been sacked these past few days, and the number of casualties wasn’t any lower than 40,000.

It must be mentioned that the individual combat capability of the aboriginal commoners and the militia members was something to be proud of because they were able to inflict 60,000 casualties on the elite Great Xia troops.

This great loss was also the reason why the Great Xia soldiers didn’t chase after the fleeing commoners after sacking the cities.

At the same time, the 3,500 drafted aboriginal soldiers were awaiting instructions to merge with the reinforcements from the Protectorate of the South in order to deal a fatal blow to the 120,000 Great Xia soldiers.

The reinforcements would join the 3,500 conscripts in seven days. It was a battle of 8,500 Dayao soldiers versus 120,000 Great Xia soldiers.

Even if Great Xia won this battle, the remaining Dayao soldier would do nothing aside from withdrawing.

Moreover, Great Xia still might lose the war.

Ren Baqian strolled to the side hall of the city commander’s residence where two radio stations were located. There was also another radio station taken by the winged cavalry that were intercepting the Great Xia soldiers.

Ren Baqian went in and asked, “Is there any news yet?”

“Not yet.” The operators responsible for communications were the guards of the empress and Li Qianqiu.

Ren Baqian nodded his head and was about to turn to leave when he heard a rustling sound on the radio station, followed by a voice that said, “This is the Protectorate of the Northeast. Is Principal Ren there?”

“Is he looking for me?” Ren Baqian was a bit uncertain, so he went back and replied, “This is Principal Ren. What’s the matter?”

“Sir, it’s Tang Feng.” Another person was speaking over the radio station.

“Aren’t you in Great Xia? I was wondering whether you were back yet and didn’t expect for you to be in the Protectorate of the Northeast.”

Ren Baqian was speaking the truth as he really had been wondering about the situation of the merchant caravans. However, it was hard to deliver messages because the radio station hadn’t been brought over yet when the caravans departed. Although bird couriers could be used, they were mostly for intra-city communication. Moreover, these birds weren’t cheap and the merchant caravans didn’t have them. Ren Baqian could only hope that the caravans had nine lives and would come back safely with their money.

Currently, the supply of medicinal herbs had been cut, the empress was bankrupt, and the remaining money in her little imperial treasury was being used to maintain the palace and the guards.

“Sir, I am not the only one who is back, Old Gu is also back. However, he is still in bed and may not wake up for a couple of weeks,” Tang Feng said.

Ren Baqian frowned, Old Gu was Gu Ziheng, who should have been in the Yun Nation at this time. Yet, even he was in the Protectorate of the Northeast? Had something happened?

After the war with Great Xia started, he knew that his mirrors and glass cups in Great Xia could be written off as a loss, so he could only depend on earning some taels of silver in the Yun Nation to recoup his losses.

One had to know that without money, there wouldn’t be medicine. Without medicine, he wouldn’t be able to improve himself. This subsequently meant that he wouldn’t be able to marry the empress, which was a grave matter. Was he trying to become a magician?

“Sir, I couldn’t bring the money back… I was robbed… I only managed to bring back 2,000 taels of gold, while the rest was snatched away. Old Gu was better than me, he barely manage to escape with 5,000 taels of gold. The rest of the goods and silver were stolen by the warlord of Qingfeng City.

Ren Baqian opened his eyes wide when he heard this.

The money he depended on to cultivate was just stolen like this?

The metal chain crawled out from the top of his head, slithered to the ground, wrapped around the stool at the side, and then raised it up high.

No one in the hall cared to look at Ren Baqian’s expression. Instead, they looked at the metal chain that was flaunting its prowess by raising the stool. Every single one of them was amazed by this feat.

“How much was stolen?” Ren Baqian squeezed some words out. He didn’t want to talk about the unsold goods, but the money from the sold goods was his hard-earned money.

They actually dared to steal Dayao’s money? How could this be tolerated!

“About 500,000 taels was stolen,” answered Tang Feng as he mentioned this startling figure.

This was 1/14th of Dayao’s annual income and equivalent to four years of income for the empress.

“Repeat the whole story. Who robbed you?” Ren Baqian gnashed his teeth in fury.

“I escaped from Juruo City in Great Xia and the culprit was from the army. Old Gu escaped from the Yun Nation and the culprit was the warlord of Qingfeng City.”

Ren Baqian just turned away after hearing this. He was pulling a stool along, but the sound of the stool hitting against the floor didn’t attract his attention at all.

“Your Majesty, your money has been stolen!”

The empress, who was watching a television series and eating popcorn, looked up in disbelief.

“Exactly one million taels!” Ren Baqian raised one finger.

The empress stared wide eyed.

“This includes the mirrors and glass cups that were given to the merchant caravans to be sold to raise money for the imperial treasury. A sum of exactly one million taels was stolen by the warlord of Qingfeng City in the Yun Nation!”

Bang! The table in front of the empress was smashed the very next moment.

“Great Xia also stole a portion.”

However, the empress didn’t pay attention to this last sentence he said because her attention was totally focused on the one million taels that were supposed to replenish the treasury. The words “warlord of Qingfeng City” had already caught the empress’s attention.

“How dare he…” The empress’s hair almost stood up on end, and she spoke each word through her gritted teeth.

“Your Majesty, it looks like the Yun Nation is going to send its troops!” Ren Baqian said matter-of-factly. It could be deduced from this matter that the Yun Nation had already decided. Otherwise, how could a warlord of a city be so daring?

The empress sort of calmed down upon hearing this, but it was hard to pacify her fury. It had always been her robbing others, but this time, she had been robbed and the sum totalled one million taels.

One million taels could get many things done.

“However, before we settle with the Yun Nation, we can send experts to deal with the warlord of Qingfeng City first. We must punish this type of person who robbed us of our hard-earned money and confiscate their family’s properties. It will be too slow if we wait until the Yun Nation is destroyed. We need to make the best use of our time,” Ren Baqian raised his fist and said forcefully.

A war was a war, but it was hard to tolerate the feeling of being robbed! As for Great Xia, this debt would be settled later. Once the Great Xia army was destroyed, he would make sure that even the mice that entered the Great Xia treasury would shed tears when escaping.

“Destroy his whole family!” The empress passed down a resolution.

“Family reunion!” Ren Baqian added.